An artwork of the "Wizard" character in Diablo 3 (Blizzard Entertainment)

The popularity of Diablo 3, one of the major online role-playing games in South Korea, has nosedived on the game rankings here, according to GameNote, a local website offering online game news.

The latest ranking table released by GameNote on Aug. 1 showed that Diablo 3 has plummeted to the 11th place, which is eight steps down from the 3rd as recorded a week earlier.

Diablo 3 was one of the most anticipated titles this year and it has managed to retain some popularity despite critical bugs and exploit issues.

Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of the multiplayer title, recently announced on its website that it has added server capacity for the Asian region to stabilize the server glitches and delays that generated plenty of complaints from Korean users.

The latest rankings suggest that despite the belated move by Blizzard, a growing number of Korean users are deserting Diablo 3, whose content remains the same. The absence of new content in the past two months since the high-profile launch seems to have left a number of players doing repetitive item hunting or going through the same courses again and again.

At major online game communities, some users complained "the server expansion should have been done much earlier."